We are closing out 2016 with another group of ten
rising photographers to keep on your radar in the
documentary, portrait, fashion, fine-art and travel
photography fields.
As a juried magazine, debates are had and hard
decisions are made. But at the end of the day, there is
one thing we all agree on: These photographers have
promising careers ahead of them, and we are thrilled
to present their work to you. In this issue, you'll see
Shaughn and John's cover story about "nuns" who
grow medical cannabis, Sarah Blesener's survey of
the growing number of nationalistic Russian youth
clubs, Varvara Mikushkina’s shimmering study of light,
and Reuben Wu’s otherworldly and technologically
advanced landscapes. Each photographer creates and
executes unique concepts that keep us captivated
from image to image.
You can see the digital editions of all Emerging
Photographer issues at issuu.com/eephotogroup.
Next year, we'll be changing publish dates to spring
and fall with new distribution to college programs, in
addition to our current distribution to photo editors,
creative directors, gallerists and photo festivals.
The submission period for Spring 2017 will open in
December at emergingphotographer.com.
—Jacqui Palumbo & Taryn Swadba

Pictured: 24-year-old Sister Kass from the Sisters of the
Valley, an unaffiliated, non-Catholic convent based in
Central Valley, California, who grow and harvest medical
marijuana to create healing salves and tinctures.

“Foto Care isn’t like any other photography store in New York City. It’s not only an incredible
resource, but a place where the knowledgable and helpful staff treats you like family.”
- Emerging Photographer and Freelance Assistant, Alex Svenski

Professor and fashion blogger Lyn
Slater made an indelible impression on
photographer Carmen Daneshmandi from
the ﬁrst moment they met. Slater writes on
her blog that she is a proponent of women
who live “interesting but ordinary lives” and
are, above all, “clear and comfortable with
who they are,” a quality that shines through
in Daneshmandi’s fashion series, “Lyn Slater,
Accidental Icon.”
Daneshmandi spent the ﬁrst couple of
months of this project simply getting to
know Slater better. Conducting closet visits
with collaborator and stylist Alnardo Pérez,
for example, was key in understanding the
role clothes play in shaping Slater’s identity.

Daneshmandi was intent on incorporating
Slater’s voice in the series, and as the
project progressed it became clear the
work would be what she calls “a visual artist
statement of sorts, a performance by Lyn.”
It was a collaborative effort to portray Slater
authentically and experimentally, she says,
“where she drove the narrative and I guided it
. . . using collage, distortion and mixed media.”
Photographed using a Canon 5D Mark
III and a variety of lenses, including a
14mm to create funhouse-like distortion, as
well as a photo booth so that Slater could
photograph herself, Daneshmandi then
cut, taped, layered and scanned the best
images to create photo collages.

Raised by immigrant parents,
Daneshmandi gets inspiration from her
parents’ old photo albums from Iran and
Spain and “any time culture and identity
is celebrated, and is done so in a way that
frees and pushes,” she says, a sensibility
she hopes to echo in a forthcoming series
of her Iranian family. More than anything,
she wants to change the “outdated status
quo” of how the photography industry still
runs, both “visually and socially.” She says:
“I need to see more women, especially
more women of color, take the reins.”
—Amy Touchette

The feeling Eliso Tsintsabadze aims to
convey in her series “Sylvan Sadness” is not
something easily expressed in words. The
name is the translated title of a poem by
Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov, “Lesnaya
Toska,” a translation she feels doesn’t do the
phrase justice. “In dictionaries, the Russian
word toska is described as some sort of
melancholia, sadness, silence, yearning and
anguish,” she explains, “but it does not have
the proper equivalent in English.”
A Georgian native, born and raised in
Moscow, Tsintsabadze began the series
while studying at the International Center
of Photography in New York City last year.

She began sorting through images she had
recently taken, and saw that certain ones
embodied the same ineffable mood.
For a year, she continued to add to the
series, but was careful not to search for
toska itself because she didn’t want the
images to appear contrived. “It was all sort
of intuitive,” she explains. The series, she
says, is not about happiness or sadness,
but “it is a pure experience of my mind of
moments I came to, and the images are just
the points on this way.”
The series was largely taken with a
variety of ﬁlm cameras, and includes a
photograph of an artiﬁcial bird in a tree,

natural light falling across a wooded area
in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a delicate portrait of
her niece. Each one transmits the ache of
beauty that one sometimes encounters in
the mundane, usually in moments of deep
contemplation.
—Brienne Walsh

When photographer Anki Grøthe
documented the annual slaughter of the
reindeer that live near her hometown of
Hemsedal, Norway, she knew it was a
perspective that needed to be shared with
others. Although Norway has strict rules on
animal welfare, and the reindeers’ lives are
taken quickly and painlessly, “killing animals
is brutal,” Grøthe says.
Grøthe’s series, titled “The Meat We
Eat,” confronts us with our eating choices.
Being removed from the process animals
undergo to become an entrée on our
plate—not to mention the harm it does to
the environment—allows many of us to

stay in the dark about the effects of our
carnivorous appetites.
Using equipment that allowed her to work
fast, a Nikon D800 and a 24-70mm lens,
Grøthe photographed the process as the
reindeer were herded from the mountains
to Golsfjellet, where the slaughtering takes
place. Although the series began as a
personal project, it was recently published
in Norway’s Inﬁnitum magazine.
Grøthe became interested in
photography in high school and ever
since has built on her knowledge of the
medium. A highlight of her education was
participating in Arno Minkkinen’s Spirit Level

workshop, a two-week road trip across the
United States. During this “experience of a
lifetime,” as Grøthe describes it, “I learned
to stay true to myself, and to tell stories that
are close to me.” “The Meat We Eat” is an
example of that integrity.
—Amy Touchette

Long inspired by images of planetary
exploration, 19th-century romantic paintings
and science ﬁction ﬁlms, photographer
Reuben Wu imbues the otherworldly into the
earthly scenes of “Lux Noctis,” which is Latin
for “night light.” He says: “[It’s an] attempt
to abandon the familiar tropes of landscape
photography and renew our perceptions of
the world.”
Wu aims to portray the landscapes in “Lux
Noctis” as if they have yet to be discovered.
Using a Phase One XF 100MP, a Leica M-P
240 and a GPS-enabled modiﬁed drone to
suspend LED lights overhead, Wu plans out
multiple lighting points to illuminate and

isolate the focus of his scene.
“I’m drawn to dramatic or extreme
environments: places that are too cold, too
hot, too dangerous for normal habitation;
places that allow a glimpse of the true nature
of the earth,” Wu says. Take, for example,
Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago about
600 miles from the North Pole, where, Wu
says, the ground is so frozen and hard that
“it’s illegal to die.” Other locations he’s
photographed are the blue ﬁre crater at
Indonesia’s Ijen volcano complex and the
most arid non-polar desert in the world, the
Atacama Desert in South America.
Born and raised in the United Kingdom,

Wu has a background in music (he’s a
founding member of the electronic band
Ladytron) and degrees in product design and
industrial design. Wu’s interest in machines
and designed objects initially drew him to
photography, inspiring him to hack broken
cameras to create original imagery. As his
investigation of the medium continues, Wu’s
goal, as he puts it, is “to continue to live with
my eyes and my mind open.”
—Amy Touchette

The title of Matthew Hamon’s series
comes from the 1857 painting by JeanFrançois Millet of the same name, which
depicts three peasant women harvesting
grain. Hamon saw similarities to the iconic
composition in his own image of two women
and a baby pulling fat from the carcass of a
bison. “I’m interested in the history of genre
painting,” he says over the phone from
Montana, where he teaches photography
and critical theory at the University of
Montana. “I like paintings of real people
doing real things—not only for the subject
matter, but also for the light.”
Shot with a Mamiya 645 with a Phase

One digital back, the images in the series
all have a painterly quality. They capture
a group of primitive-skills practitioners
who collaborate with Native Americans—
including the Nez Perce and Confederated
Salish and Kootenai tribes—during their
annual buffalo hunt on the perimeter
of Yellowstone National Park. Gleaning
describes what they do—although Hamon
says they prefer to be called scavengers.
They follow the Native American tribes on
their hunts, gathering parts of the animal
that are typically left behind by most biggame hunters, and harvest them.
Hamon, who contacted the practitioners

after reading a blog post about their hidetanning methods, spent ten days traveling
with the group in the dead of winter. A hunter
himself, Hamon was at ease. The images, he
believes, convey the reverent consideration
hunters have for the animals they cull. But
more than that, he says, the series allows the
viewer to look at a group of people normally
hidden from society “with an intensity that is
reserved for their most intimate relationships
with family and lovers.”
—Brienne Walsh

Inspired partly by his dreams, partly by
fashion and partly by Surrealist art of the
early 20th century, photographer Ping
Wang created “The Nostalgia of the Inﬁnite,”
a conceptual series that Wang describes
as “an emotional life history.” The series
comprises three sections—“Asleep,”
“Delusional” and “Untrammeled”—which,
together, aim to portray the process of
transitioning from a state of emotional
disquietude to one of contentment and
inﬁnite possibility.
With a menagerie of references to pay
homage to—the paintings of Giorgio de
Chirico and Kay Sage, and the fashion
photography of Tim Walker and Noell
Oszvald—Wang set out to create the same
“dramatic light and shadow, exaggerated
perspective and strong symbolism” in
their works in order to depict a powerful,
dreamlike visual experience.
To simulate the ﬂat, planar qualities of
Surrealist art, Wang worked entirely in
the studio, ﬁrst photographing props and
surfaces he hand painted in one shoot
and then photographing the models in a
separate shoot. Although Wang considers
his “eyes and memory” his best equipment,
he made the series using a Sony a7R II and
a Canon 24-70mm lens.
Born and raised in Beijing, China, in a
strict military family, Wang moved to New
York City at the age of 24. After many
years of being enamored by writing, Wang
eventually realized that “words are not
enough to describe subtle emotions.” Three
years ago he turned to photography to ﬁll
that gap, earning a master’s degree from
the School of Visual Arts in 2016.
—Amy Touchette

When the Kern family ﬁrst commissioned
Roni and David Rose to take a series of
portraits, the photographers had no idea
that they would become so entwined
with the family both professionally and
personally. “We couldn’t have imagined
their harmony,” Roni explains. David adds:
“Whatever it is that keeps birds ﬂying in
formation, and keeps ﬁsh in groups, they
have that, they’re all in sync with each
other.” The photography duo, who are also
married, have taken more than 500 images
of the family in the six months since they
ﬁrst met.

“Our Summer of Red Dye Number Five,”
a title that evokes the photographers’
nostalgia for childhood, is made up of
images from the Roses’ ﬁrst session with the
Kerns. The series captures the family—three
children and two parents devoted to home
schooling them—at their home in Harvard,
Illinois, and at a drive-in movie theater
nearby. The scenes embody a certain ideal
of what an American family looks like:
The young pink-haired daughter dances
to a vinyl copy of Lana Del Rey’s album
“Ultraviolence,” and the tattooed father sets
up a bed of blankets for the family in the

back of their hatchback. They exude love
and trust—and perhaps an ache for what the
viewers may themselves be missing.
“There is very little to no question about
what this means, or what is happening in
the frame,” David says. “The images make
you feel what’s happening.” Roni adds: “This
is what life is about.”
—Brienne Walsh

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In April 2016, during a trip to Moscow,
photographer Sarah Blesener stumbled
upon a cadet class learning how to
dismantle AK-47s and get in and out
of biohazard suits quickly. This jarring
sight, combined with a growing interest
in patriotic ideology being taught to kids,
inspired Blesener to document patriotic
clubs, education and summer camps in
Russia, eventually resulting in her aptly
titled, ongoing series, “Toy Soldiers.”
Currently, about 200,000 Russian youths
are enrolled in patriotic clubs—each with
their own structures and philosophies—a
number that is likely on the rise due to a

program the Russian government recently
proposed, “Patriotic education of citizens
of the Russian Federation for 2016-2020.”
Traveling by bus and train and living in tents
at the camps, Blesener kept her gear as
simple as possible, bringing only her Canon
5D Mark III, a couple of lenses, a monopod
and audio equipment.
“Toy Soldiers” stems from Blesener’s
larger desire to understand the world and
foster empathy. “Photography is incredibly
political, critical and necessary to address
stereotypes, confront our own fears and
weaknesses, and talk about issues that
otherwise would be left on the sidelines,”

she explains. Keen on continuing to
investigate nationalism, Blesener, who is a
recent graduate of the International Center
of Photography, cites its dean, Fred Ritchin,
as being a major inﬂuence on her ideology
as a photojournalist. She plans to expand
the work to include the United States and
Europe, focusing speciﬁcally on how youth
are taught these ideologies.
—Amy Touchette

Shaughn Crawford and John DuBois ﬁrst
heard about the Sisters of the Valley, a
collective of women in Central California
who grow medical marijuana to create
healing salves and tinctures, when Crawford
watched a news program about them over
Thanksgiving with his in-laws. “John and
I always have our ear to the ground for
these types of stories for personal projects,”
he explains over the phone from Los
Angeles. The duo met while interning for
photographer Art Streiber, and have been
shooting as a team for over a year.
The sisters invited Crawford and DuBois
to photograph them at the house at which

they originally ran their operation. Though
the sisters are not affiliated with any "earthly"
religion (their website says their spiritual
practices "support the process of making
medicine"), they pair the white wimples of
traditional nuns’ habits with Swiss fabric
blouses and jean skirts. The resulting
images, shot on a Canon 5D Mark III, have a
crisp, documentary feel, as if hours of details
are captured within a single frame.
Sister Kate, the leader of the order, was
initially not happy with the shots. “She
thought we made her look a little too real,”
Crawford says. “She wasn’t stoked with how
she looked.”

Once the story went viral, their feelings
on the photographs changed. The images
were shown on CNN.com, and the exposure
introduced buyers from all over the world
to the sisters’ products. Since then, they've
upgraded from a house to a compound, and
Crawford and DuBois have been welcomed
with open arms. They recently returned
to make a short ﬁlm about the women
performing a spiritual ceremony under a new
moon. “It’s ﬁlmed around a campﬁre, and lit
by candles,” DuBois explains. “It’s beautiful
and a little spooky.”
—Brienne Walsh

Varvara Mikushkina conceptualized “Lux
and Lumen” out of necessity. She was
trying to make sense of an overabundance
of images she had shot while studying for
her MFA at Parsons School of Design, and
saw that they all ﬁt under one umbrella
as studies of light. They also embodied
elements of her heritage. Born in Russia in
1989, Mikushkina moved to Queens, New
York, with her family as a young child, and
settled in Syracuse in 2003.
“I created this framework for myself—I
would photograph things that were shiny
and reﬂective in sunlight,” she says. “I
was interested in this idea of a clichéd

version of nostalgia.” Lux and lumen,
both measurements of light, became the
organizing principle for the body of work.
Most of the images are photographed on
ﬁlm using a Mamiya RZ67. Shooting analog
comes naturally to Mikushkina, as she’s
been doing so since the seventh grade. “I
imagine a set in my mind, and I know I can
get it with a ﬁlm camera,” she explains.
In “Lux and Lumen,” Mikushkina
juxtaposes reﬂective objects such as
sheets of tinfoil, mirrors and crystal beads
with soft, ﬂat surfaces to create images
that exude a baroque fullness. Flush with
robust blues, golds, greens and reds, the

images look somehow “rich” even though
they depict common, everyday objects,
shot in her apartment in New York City,
and her parents’ home in Syracuse. “I like
the falseness of images, how things are
not what they seem,” Mikushkina says.
She adds: “I’m over-packing an image with
details that I want the viewer to take away a
little bit and peel back.”
She also wanted to capture the physical
quality of light, she explains. “You know the
light, you’ve stood in the sunlight and you
know how that feels.”
—Brienne Walsh

PORTFOLIO OF ONE
Could you define your work with a single image? Photojour nalist
Patrick Tombola gives it a tr y.

The global drug trade is not a topic that is easily
dissected, but photojournalist Patrick Tombola is
examining country by country the unique social
and political conditions that make the ingredients
for violence.
In the last issue of Emerging Photographer, we
featured Tombola's work in El Salvador, “Not Free
to Be Young.” Tombola was interested in how
Salvadoran youths are recruited into the drug
trade—often becoming homicide statistics.
He has continued to explore this link between
youth, violence and drugs across borders, most
recently in the Philippines this summer. “I wanted
to understand how these issues play themselves
out in different contexts and who the main actors
were,” he says. This particular image shows the
scene of a drug-related murder in Manila.
Though his work in El Salvador and the
Philippines share similar themes, Tombola says
that each country’s approach to its drug war is
complex in its differences. In El Salvador, two
opposing gangs control large swaths of territory;

in the Philippines, areas are “meticulously”
controlled by armed officials. And while there
have been cases of vigilantism by El Salvador’s
police, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has
publicly supported extrajudicial murders.
“In both countries I encountered
disenfranchised youth that buy and sell drugs as
a means to survive, that end up joining the ranks
of the gangs that are often manipulated by those
in power for their own purposes,” Tombola says.
And that is a recurring theme that Tombola
encounters. To understand its cause on a global
scale, Tombola points to history, and the “slow,
simmering narco-insurgencies” in poorer nations
since the end of the Cold War. “The youth that
in the 1970s would have fought for a Marxist
or right-wing ideal is now disillusioned and
has taken up arms, often without any social or
political awareness,” he explains.
A documentary series this extensive can
be a challenge to tackle—and to sustain—but
Tombola says the El Salvador series taught him
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an important lesson: “Time and dedication always
pay off.” To improve as a photojournalist, he
believes one must return to the same places to
tell challenging stories. And while that’s not easy
to do on a limited budget, Tombola has found
that sectioning a larger story and pitching it as
individual editorial assignments goes a long way;
grants and competition prize money also help.
Tombola plans to return to the Philippines to
continue this chapter, and in the coming months,
he’ll also travel to Cuba, Hungary, Sri Lanka and
Yemen for magazine assignments. Follow him on
Instagram @ptombola.
—Jacqui Palumbo
Portfolio of One is brought to you by B&H Photo and Video.
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